Enfacement Illusion and Chronic Migraine Pain

NCT04904458 · Status: UNKNOWN · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 100

Last updated 2021-10-13

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The concept of body image can be described as "the intentional content of consciousness comprising perceptions, attitudes and beliefs relating to one's body". Over the years, there has been a growing interest in this topic, highlighting that body image can be distorted in people suffering from pain conditions, especially in the case of chronic pain. One way of modulating the perception of pain through the perception of body image is through the use of interventions based on visual feedback. In this regard, some studies have highlighted the possibility of reducing the perception of pain in healthy and clinical populations with the use of "illusions" of one's own body created through immersive virtual reality. For example, through the use of synchronous visual-tactile multisensory stimulation on one's own face / body and on that of others (fake body), is possible to induce illusions of self-recognition in other fake bodies. In the case of the face, this type of illusion of belonging of other faces is commonly known as the "enfacement illusion", through which is possible to change or modulate the self-representation, with important implications for all those subjects who have distorted body representations, such as patients suffering from chronic pain. The main goal of the present protocol is to evaluate the effects of an experimental treatment based on enfacement illusion on the perception of pain (VAS scale) with respect to a control condition (pleasant virtual environment exposure). The secondary objective is to study any correlations between pain and body image, personal, clinical and psychological intrapersonal variables. One-hundred patients with chronic headache will be randomly assigned to the two conditions: experimental group (based on the "enfacement illusion") and control group (exposed to a pleasant virtual environment). Both conditions include an immersive virtual reality treatment of 3 sessions of 15 minutes each, during one week.

Conditions

Interventions

OTHER

Experimental group ("enfacement illusion")

Virtual reality enfacement illusion exposure

OTHER

Control Group (Pleasant virtual environment exposure)

Pleasant virtual environment exposure

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • IRCCS National Neurological Institute "C. Mondino" Foundation

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Cristina Tassorelli, Prof · Headache Science Center

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
65 Years
Sex
FEMALE
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-04-30
Primary Completion
2024-03-30
Completion
2024-03-30

Countries

  • Italy

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04904458 on ClinicalTrials.gov